The best predatorial journal come-ons

[Puget]

I get multiple of these a week as well (including the exact one in the OP), which mostly go to straight to spam but a few sneak through to the inbox. The most puzzling thing to me is most of them seem to have put zero effort into looking at all convincing as a legitimate journal communication-- colored fonts, broken English, weird greetings ("Dear most esteemed Doctor!!"). You would think they would at least try to scam better.

Also, everyone seems to want to sell me custom peptides, despite the fact that I don't do anything remotely related to anything that would require custom peptides and I can't imagine that anyone who did need custom peptides would order them from random places that email them.

Sometimes random people also really want to share with me and my psychology colleagues their groundbreaking theories that they are sure we would like to collaborate with them on and help them publish. Surprisingly often these theories involve Hitler's relationship with his mother. More troubling are the occasional emails I get from clearly psychotic people who want us to investigate the mind control devices implanted in their brains etc. The last one was extremely long and contained just about every common delusion and attached CT scans.

[saffie]

I received this one recently -- it struck me as spammy. It was followed by another email seeking Lead Guest Editors for Special Issues of the same journal. (Sent by different email address, neither of which matched the journal website URL.)

Warmest greetings!

We get to know your precious paper with the title Advanced Basketweaving which has been published in A Past Year's Basketweaving Conference, and the topic of the paper has impressed us a lot. Researchers specializing in basket history, basket interiors, variations in weaving patterns, have showed interests in your paper.

With the aim to promote basketweaving within scientific community, specialists and professionals in different research fields can get the cutting-edge research results from Our Basketweaving Journal. In light of the novelty, advance, and potential wide applications of your innovation, we invite you to send other unpublished works of related fields to the journal. Latest research on this published article is also welcomed.

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the journal, it is glorified for us to invite you to join us as the editorial board member or reviewer of Our Basketweaving Journal. Your academic background and professional and rich experience in this field are high appreciated by the Editorial Board, so we really hope you can be a part of our team. We hope that your position as the editorial board member/reviewer will promote international academic collaborations.

[risenanew]

This thread is pure comedy gold.

My strangest emails are when spammers from fake podiatry journals invite me to write articles for them... all because I once published a paper with a title that alludes to the saying of "having one's foot out the door."

Mind you, this was a psychology article about leaving unhappy relationships...

Needless to say, I sometimes feel like I'm being besieged by deceitful foot fetishists!

[Scout]

This thread is pure comedy gold.

My strangest emails are when spammers from fake podiatry journals invite me to write articles for them... all because I once published a paper with a title that alludes to the saying of "having one's foot out the door."

Mind you, this was a psychology article about leaving unhappy relationships...

Needless to say, I sometimes feel like I'm being besieged by deceitful foot fetishists!

That's hysterical

[Kron3007]

I just got invited to be the Keynote speaker at a conference.  Keynote speakers can enjoy 15% off the registration fee if the register by Aug 30th!

[secundem_artem]

I just got invited to be the Keynote speaker at a conference.  Keynote speakers can enjoy 15% off the registration fee if the register by Aug 30th!

That's nearly as goofy as the invitations I get to speak at a conference in Shanghai - in about 10 days from the time the email was sent.

As to journal come ons, I've been asked to contribute my valuable research to journals publishing on topics ranging from electrical engineering to ear nose and throat surgery.  Surely I must be some sort of renaissance man to attract such a diverse selection of scammy spammy requests.

[saramago]

I unfortunately don't have a new one to add, but do want to say that this is an immensely entertaining thread (e.g., "your precious paper", LOL!). Let's keep it alive!

[writingprof]

Am I the only one who gets phone calls from these people?  Alas, I cannot describe the voices on the other end of the line without trafficking in xenophobic stereotypes. 

[Scout]

Am I the only one who gets phone calls from these people?  Alas, I cannot describe the voices on the other end of the line without trafficking in xenophobic stereotypes. 

No, seriously! That's hysterical.

[Juvenal]

Am I the only one who gets phone calls from these people?  Alas, I cannot describe the voices on the other end of the line without trafficking in xenophobic stereotypes.

We know you are talking about Transylvanian accents.

[writingprof]

Am I the only one who gets phone calls from these people?  Alas, I cannot describe the voices on the other end of the line without trafficking in xenophobic stereotypes.

We know you are talking about Transylvanian accents.

That's close, actually.  But, no, my monograph will not be issued by Count Chocula Press.

[Conjugate]

"Dear Dr. Scout,

I am Lexy J. Miller, Editorial assistant from Siam Publishing Group Ltd. contacting you with the reference from our editorial department. Basing on your outstanding contribution to the scientific community, we would like to write a book for you.

Researchers like you are adding so much value to the scientific community, yet you are not getting enough exposure. No matter how many papers you publish in famous journals, you will be still unknown to common people. To solve this problem, we came up with this unique solution.

With our book writing service, we will write your research contributions in common man's language. We will also include all your published papers into this book in a way that a common man can understand it. And then, we will publish your book with our publishing group. Before, publication, we will send the draft to you for scientific accuracy, once you approve our draft, we then proceed for publication. You will get all the rights of your book, and all the sales generated from your book will be credited to you.

I am so terribly tempted.  Here's the plan.  Someone once wrote a simple program to create a gibberish-filled Computer Science paper by sprinkling buzzwords in at random.

Get that program (or its code), expand to book length, and set these people on it. We'd have to use pseudonyms so as not to ruin the academic reputations of any "real" people (unless, you know, we didn't like those people—or no, back away from that). But it would be wonderful to see what kind of "lay language" they could get from that mass of gibberish.

[Puget]

Ask not what the predatory journal can do for you, ask what you can do for the predatory journal edition:

We have communicatedyou earlier, but there is no response from you, so we would like to contact you another time! In view of your previous contributions and research interests, we are contacting you again to submit the manuscript which is useful for the journal growth.

We need your support by sharing your valuable manuscripts towards our Journal. I welcome you to submit the articles to this email as an attachment (If your manuscript is going to be ready for publication).

If you don't have any material in your hand, please allow us to know the feasible date of your submission. An early confirmation from your side is very much appreciated as it really helps to provide quality research to the scientific community.

I would appreciate if you will respond to this email. Your manuscript could contribute a lot to Science.

Well, then, I will certainly share my valuable manuscripts towards your journal, because Science.

[Morris Zapp]

Got one recently that said that I could edit a journal issue on any subject I liked.  I'm thinking "The Bachelor".

[miss jane marple]

I would appreciate if you will respond to this email. Your manuscript could contribute a lot to Science.

Hmm, how big does the lot need to be?  Buildable? Utilities? What is Science going to do with this lot? So many questions.